


Dry-cleaning

by Trojie



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: Angst, Book/Movie Fusion, Introspection, Multi, Retrospective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 01:18:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2794502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than a streak of pink in Peter Guillam, but there never was a single speck of yellow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dry-cleaning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jenny_Starseed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenny_Starseed/gifts).



> I have leaned heavily towards book canon here (including quoting a short extract from the text), but Peter being homosexual and leaving his partner I lifted from the movie. I really enjoyed getting into the meat of this friendship and I hope this is something like what you were hoping for for Yuletide. Thank you for a wonderful prompt to work with!

'- and I've put Saxby and young Milsom on the desk for the first shift. There's some bit of trouble with the cousins, apparently, all hands on deck with the wireless as it were, so -'

If there were more men in the world like Peter Guillam, more solid fellows who could take care of details like who _listens to the radio most accurately_ , thought George Smiley as he watched said Guillam report back on the minutiae of Circus day to day operations, then there would probably, very likely, not need to be a Circus at all. 

It was either a wonder, or no wonder at all, then, that the Guillams of the world never seemed to walk through the door very frequently. Smiley could get his hands on any number of solid University men, cricket bats and flirtations with Communist newspapers and faint streaks of pink in their records, far too clever by half and all too keen to prove themselves in service of the country, if he wanted them. 

But there only appeared to be one Guillam -

'- quiet on the Czecho front, and the watchers say -'

and the Circus had him, in his entirety. 

The Circus was lucky.

***

There are some moments that tell you the true character of a man. Some choices, some reactions, that give him away. Smiley has seen Peter Guillam's true steel core, but it was such a tiny thing, so carefully hidden by Peter, that he might have missed it.

Smiley had been caught up in memory, swamped by his own reflection in a graven _all my love_ that he thought he'd lost, in the sight of Gerstmann walking away to his death and rebirth. He didn't think. 

He said, 'After today, Peter, you have to assume they're watching you. If there's anything you need tidied up, now's the time.'

And Peter's face, a little soft and lax from drink, became stone. 

More than a streak of pink in Peter, Smiley had known for a good long while. Unlike some of his fellows, though, Smiley never really gave it much significance. After all, those in glass houses and what have you - Smiley's home life is as tempestuous as a mythical Greek sea, always some Scylla or Charybdis to avoid, Ann neither a Penelope nor a Circe either, but fierce as both. He didn't, doesn't, never has, assumed that home-life and work-life share patterns, not like that. Or at least not in his case, and all he meant when he said it to Peter was little scalphunter deals, little off-the-books odds and sods - stop 'em. 

Smiley didn't _think_.

Smiley had his own loose ends, then and now and he's never tidied them up. He has had that luxury. 

Peter came in to the Hotel Islay the next day, never said a word. Tidy. His shirt had hung just slightly wrong and his eyes, always a little solemn, had been hollow, but the only words he'd said were to ask for Smiley's next orders.

'Are you alright, Peter? You look a little under the weather.'

Peter shrugged. 'I didn't sleep well, sir.' It was a beautiful lie. The inquisitors who'd taught him would have been proud. Smiley let it go, more important things on his mind just then, but he thought of it often afterwards, after his return to the Circus properly.

Yes, there's more than a streak of pink in Peter. But there never was a single speck of yellow. 

***

If you wanted an example of the other way a man's colours can run, you wouldn't find a better one than the damned Tinker Tailor affair.

It was frankly something of a wonder that Bill Haydon's letter to Fanshawe was never picked up. Sarrat surely should have asked questions. But: _'Fan, you know how hard it is for me to_ act _. You have to remind me all the time, intellectually remind me, that unless I sample life's dangers I shall never know its mysteries. But Jim acts from instinct … he is functional … He's my other half, between us we'd make one marvellous man, except that neither of us can sing'_ went apparently completely by. Put aside as university high spirits, the enthusiasm of youth, Smiley supposes. And Bill always was overblown when he wrote, just as much as Jim was understated.

If Bill had let Jim Prideaux die in Brno, it might have been a different story, and likewise if Jim had let Bill go living to Moscow. They might never have cleared it up. Alleline might have unwittingly sold the Circus and the cousins both to Moscow Centre. So many ifs, buts, maybes - the whole thing was a mess from beginning to end and maybe no-one will ever really sort out where it started, but the general feeling, the undertone, Circus gossip in the quietest way, thought Tinker Tailor hinged on the Inseparables. 

Smiley knew better, because _he_ did the running around, but it was Peter Guillam did his legwork. And if Peter Guillam had cut and run when Smiley cautioned him that night, they'd still be under Witchcraft's spell. That's the long and short of it. 

***

The funny thing ( _the rum thing,_ Jerry Westerby mused in the back of Smiley's head, _the rum bloody thing_ ) was that Smiley never intended the consequences to be what they were. It was a stock order, it was the same thing he'd say to anyone. Peter had been a scalphunter, head of the scalphunters, that little adder-pit of deniable, burrnable, black little jobs, and Smiley had quite naturally assumed that Peter would want to see his paperwork in order, as it were, before doing anything untoward. Just in case, you understand. He hadn't expected … well. And every time he had tried to put himself in Peter's place since then, he'd run up against, well, Ann. The fact of Ann. The reality of Ann, the nature of Ann. And he'd never been able to countenance doing what Peter did, even in the hypothetical. 

_Nobody divorces Ann,_ his lawyer had said. No-one would ask him to, is the counter to that. 

Smiley wouldn't choose to, though. Not for anything. Not for the Circus, of all things. 

Peter Guillam caught Smiley's eye from across the fifth floor. He was half-behind a stack of paperwork, sleeves rolled up, and they were the only ones left this late at night, neither of them with anyone to go home to. 

_If there's anything you need tidied up -_ Smiley had told Peter. Intelligence has always been about networks, about pieces of string from person to person, and Smiley can follow this one from a tied-up loose end, to a van Mieris chalk-portrait, to a bullet-hole. Two bullet-holes, really, a year or so apart. 

They're all answers to the same question. What would you do? If you were pushed. If you were desperate. If you could choose, what would you do for love? 

Smiley nodded at Peter across the quiet midnight floor. Peter waved a brown folder, smiled, and turned back to his files.


End file.
